People Before Profit blog

Gay Pride Month: Communists stand in solidarity

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 06:49:00 +0000

The following statement was issued June 21 by the Communist Party USA and Young Communist League in honor of Pride Month.

The month of June has been designated as Pride Month in celebration of the struggles and achievements of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the United States. This coming weekend marks the anniversary of the uprising that occurred at the Stonewall Inn on June 27, 1969, in New York City. The uprising, in response to bar raids and attacks by the police, was led by working-class gay and transgender people, many of whom were Black or Latino, and became a rallying point for LGBT people in the United States and around the world.

Every year since, LGBT people and their allies have been holding parades and rallies to highlight the discrimination that LGBT people face and to struggle forward for equality and liberation.

In 2006, we still have a long ways to go. This year marks the 25th year of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Today, millions of people are still denied access to life-saving drugs and medical help because of profit-driven drug corporations. In our schools, the ultra-right and religious conservatives deny students access to scientifically accurate sex education while more young people are becoming infected with HIV every year.

In our schools, in our workplaces and in our streets, LGBT people are faced with discrimination, hatred and violence.

Last week Kevin Aviance, a famous gay performer, was attacked and beaten in what is considered a “gay friendly” area in NYC. In Moscow, 50 LGBT people were arrested for attempting to hold the city’s first-ever Gay Pride Parade. In Australia, the president overturned a law that would allow same-sex marriage and the conservative government now in power in Canada is also seeking to overturn its law that allows gay marriage.

Here at home, Bush and the ultra-right continue to push the anti-gay button in order to drum up support in the 2006 elections. Just as in 2004, Bush is using gay marriage as a rallying cry for his conservative base that has started to turn against him because of his disastrous handling of the Iraq war and domestic issues.

We at the Communist Party USA and the Young Communist League USA stand in solidarity with our LGBT brothers and sisters in the fight for full equality. We demand an end to the violence and discrimination against LGBT people in our schools, workplaces and communities. We will be marching, rallying and celebrating this weekend in Pride Parades across the country and invite all readers of the People’s Weekly World to join us in the struggle for LGBT equality.

For more information about the Communist Party, go to www.cpusa.org. For the Young Communist League, go to www.yclusa.org.

Peace candidate gives Lieberman strong challenge

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 06:28:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

When Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) walks into the Connecticut AFL-CIO convention this week, his 84 percent pro-labor lifetime voting record will be his calling card. Yet, Connecticut’s labor unions have taken a strong stand in opposition to the Bush administration’s war on Iraq, which Lieberman unabashedly supports, and questions are sure to arise.

Lieberman is facing a primary challenge from Ned Lamont, a Greenwich businessman who passionately opposes the war. Lamont declared his candidacy three months ago. Very quickly the campaign took on the feel of a grassroots movement in a state with three swing House seats on the line.

Lamont’s compelling commitment to universal health care and fully funded public education won immediate respect. He amazed everyone by garnering a third of the vote at the Democratic Party convention, double the requirement for a primary.

Resentment runs high at Lieberman for refusing to change his stand on Iraq. The most recent Quinnipiac Poll shows 63 percent of Connecticut voters believe it was wrong to go to war.

In Washington two weeks ago, Ned Lamont was a star at the Take Back America conference. “If Joe Lieberman doesn’t want to stand up to President Bush, I will,” he said to cheers at a packed fund-raiser. He said students at Bridgeport’s Harding High School asked why $250 million a day is being spent in Iraq when we can’t afford health care, clean energy and good schools. “Those are the choices we should make for a better America,” said Lamont. “When the Democrats are clear and bold they win.”

Progressives from all corners of the country, infuriated that their former vice presidential nominee is cozy with Bush, are looking to Lamont for hope. “This is a race for the soul of the Democratic Party,” asserted Jim Dean of Democrats for America.

“This is not a time to be safe,” Sharon Palmer, president of AFT Connecticut, the state’s second largest AFL-CIO union, told the media last week, endorsing Lamont.

“More than $250 million a day is being diverted into the war in Iraq,” said Palmer, “money that could have been used to improve public services in Connecticut. Ned Lamont understands this and will stand up to the Bush administration.”

Connecticut is important in the national drive to change control of Congress. Three House races are on the target list of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and other organizations as places where incumbent Republicans can be defeated by Democrats. All three Democrats oppose the war and support health care for all.

In the 2nd Congressional District, former state Rep. Joe Courtney is challenging Republican incumbent Rob Simmons, a former CIA officer. In the 4th CD, Westport First Selectwoman Diane Farrell is challenging incumbent Republican Chris Shays, a rematch of a closely fought race in 2004. In the 5th CD, state Sen. Chris Murphy is challenging Republican Nancy Johnson, chair of the House health subcommittee that ushered through the controversial Medicaid prescription drug bill.

“With me at the top of the ticket we will elect all three Democrats,” says Lamont. “This campaign is energizing new voters and inspiring older voters to come out.”

Among the biggest enthusiasts is MoveOn.org, which has been raising funds and volunteers. In an online vote, 85 percent of Connecticut’s MoveOn members selected Lamont.

Angry at Lieberman’s refusal to support a filibuster to stop the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, the National Organization for Women Political Action Committee supports Lamont. “These are precarious times for women,” says NOW/PAC. “We cannot be satisfied with a senator who votes for women much of the time, or even most of the time. We need courageous leaders who will protect and advance all of our rights all of the time.”

While the Democratic primary is not until Aug. 8, both candidates are looking toward the general election and courting the independent vote.

Lieberman, worried that he could lose the primary, is considering switching to run as an independent, causing an uproar among some Democrats.

This week Lamont was endorsed by Lowell Weicker, Republican senator in the 1970s and ’80s before losing his seat to Lieberman. Weicker then switched to A Connecticut Party and was elected governor.

The stakes are high in Connecticut. Activists can take heart that the grassroots base is organizing.

HR 676 on election agenda

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 09:21:00 +0000

“The question isn’t whether we can afford to have universal, single-payer health care; the question is, can we afford not to?” reads the first resolution passed by the United Auto Workers convention this week.

The nation’s health care crisis, said union President Ron Gettelfinger, is not something that can be “fixed” at the bargaining table. A longtime supporter of single-payer health care, the UAW took a step forward in pointing to specific legislation that can make that a reality.

“Medicare for All” or HR 676, if passed, would guarantee health coverage to every person in the U.S. It expands upon and upgrades the Medicare system and would include a real prescription drug program, hospitalization, surgical, outpatient services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health, physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision care, chiropractic and long-term care.

The UAW endorsement is the latest in a tide of labor-based support for the bill. To date, 143 labor organizations, including 25 central labor councils, have gone on record in support of the bill. Not a week goes by without several more locals and retiree groups joining the list.

As employers, large and small, move to push skyrocketing health care costs onto workers and retirees, the toll has been taken on wages, pensions and other benefits. U.S. autoworkers have been blamed for being “uncompetitive” because health care costs add $1,500 to the price of every new vehicle.

Some UAW delegates demanded that the big corporations who cry crocodile tears over rising health care costs should be called on to lean on their Republican allies in Congress to support legislation like HR 676, which would rein in those costs. The union points out that the program would save the nation billions every year by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs.

HR 676, introduced by Michigan Democrat Rep. John Conyers, now has 70 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. Labor’s snowballing support and its impressive grassroots response make it possible for HR 676 to be a focal point for the 2006 congressional races.

Puerto Ricos crisis highlights its colonial status

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:14:00 +0000

As politicians wrangle over an overhaul of the tax system in Puerto Rico in order to avoid a budget crisis similar to the one that closed down the country’s schools and many government services for two weeks in May, the people are expressing their lack of confidence in the colonialist parties. Their attitudes are evident in public opinion polls and in the decision by increasing numbers to emigrate.

While Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, leader of the autonomist Popular Democratic Party (PPD), is not blameless in the current crisis, the lion’s share of responsibility has been put at the feet of Sen. Pedro Rosselló, chairman of the annexationist New Progressive Party (PNP). Rosselló is a former governor.

An article in the Puerto Rican pro-independence newsweekly Claridad said an Ipsos-Hispania poll, conducted shortly after schools and government agencies reopened, showed that 78 percent considered Rosselló either “very responsible” or “somewhat responsible” for the impasse between the legislature and the governor’s office that caused the shutdown.

José Aponte, PNP leader in the Chamber of Representatives, did not escape criticism either. Fifty-five percent said Aponte had a “negative image.”

A self-selected, unscientific online poll conducted by the daily El Nuevo Día showed that over 77 percent believe the government will likely shut down again. No doubt partially as a result of this belief, many Puerto Ricans have told the media they plan to move the United States.

Social scientists in Puerto Rico are projecting new emigration figures that rival those of the 1940s and 1950s. In those decades, many thousands of Puerto Rican emigrants left for New York City and the surrounding area. Many of today’s Puerto Rican emigrants are moving to the Orlando, Fla., area. Florida now has the second highest Puerto Rican population of any state in the U.S.

The governor and the legislature are currently fighting over what kind of sales tax to impose on the people of Puerto Rico. The various sales tax schemes range from 4 percent to 7 percent.

Progressive forces are fighting for an extra tax on the big, profitable corporations under the slogan, “Let the rich pay.” Most of these are foreign companies, mainly transnational corporations based in the U.S.

The Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) submitted a bill that would have taxed corporations making $1 million or more in annual profits an extra 10 percent. The PNP and the PPD amended the bill, taxing the corporations at a lower rate. They also allowed the companies to claim the additional tax as a credit on next year’s bill, making the “tax,” in effect, a one-year loan.

The budget crisis and the question of who should pay for it has brought to the fore the question of the colonial relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

In its tax reform proposal last year, the PIP noted that families paid almost $3 billion in taxes in 2005, while corporations paid under $2 billion. As working families’ taxes rose, so did “the amount of profits taken out of Puerto Rico by corporations of foreign capital,” the PIP said.

These mostly U.S. corporations, which enjoy special status as a result of the colonial relationship, have taken more than $138 billion out of Puerto Rico over the last five years.

In his recent testimony before the UN Decolonization Committee, Hector Pesquera, co-chair of the Hostos National Independence Movement, said: “The national economy, dependent and peripheral to that of the U.S., is frankly bankrupt. Puerto Rico has a public debt which is more than $40 billion, which makes us the nation with the biggest per capita public debt in the entire hemisphere.”

He continued: “Private debts are over $50 billion and U.S.-bound emigration means that today there are more Puerto Ricans living outside the island than in the national territory. Meanwhile, foreign corporations, mainly U.S., take $30 billion in net profits out of the country, and the financial sector and the banks have accumulated scandalous amounts in profits.”

A communist view: Where is the leverage for U.S. workers in the fight with Delphi and GM?

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 06:33:00 +0000

Labor’s potential strength is mighty, greater than any other social force on earth, because of what workers produce worldwide and because labor represents the interests of the overwhelming majority of humanity. The current attacks on labor are driven by capitalism’s deepening contradictions, its growing weakness, not strength.

Labor productivity at General Motors, including what is now Delphi, has climbed over 300 percent since the early 1970s, at the cost of brutal speedup and physical and mental wear-and-tear on workers. The average price of a car has jumped more than 400 percent in the same period. Yet Wall Street and Delphi management say they cannot afford the contracts they have signed. They are demanding plant closures and 60 percent or more cuts in United Auto Workers and other union members’ pay, benefits and pensions.

GM/Delphi management and Wall Street paint a picture of a struggling corporation caught in a fierce global competition to build and sell cars. They want the UAW to believe that the health care, pensions and benefits owed U.S. workers make it impossible for them to compete. They argue that they must renege on their obligations and slash wages, or go bankrupt. They threaten bankruptcy in the U.S. as if GM and Delphi did not have investments and profits all around the world.

In fact, GM has manufacturing operations in 32 countries across the globe. GM and Delphi have both opened major new facilities in recent years in Mexico, Eastern Europe and Asia. Delphi has invested over half a billion dollars in new plants in China alone in the past 12 years. Last October, when Delphi filed for bankruptcy of its North American division, The Wall Street Journal reported that Delphi’s Asian division is profitable and hiring even more workers as it expands across the region. It supplies not only GM, but also Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Honda and Volkswagen.

Delphi workers in the U.S. are fighting for their lives against the theft of their benefits and brutal demands for wage cuts and plant closings. Labor and progressives can’t for a minute neglect this immediate fight. If Delphi workers are forced to strike, then they will need all-out help to build labor and community support. And labor must join in all campaigns to challenge the unfair use of bankruptcy law to tear up contracts. Bankruptcy law reform should include putting workers at the top of the list of creditors whose claims must be paid, not last as under current law.

Needed: worldwide union standards

When GM, Ford and Chrysler dominated the U.S. market, the UAW had to organize them all to have leverage. To be effective, the union had to put a floor under wages and working conditions for the Big Three nationwide in order to secure a decent standard of living. That in turn raised standards for millions of other workers in the U.S., including for unorganized workers.

Isn’t that what has to happen now on a global basis? The car companies charge the same for a model whether it was built in Mexico, the U.S. or Canada, despite the differences in pay and benefits between the plants. The claim that lower wages mean lower prices does not stand up — all they do is make more profits off the lower wages.

The step up to worldwide union standards, like the step up from craft to industrial unionism in earlier times, has to be part of the solution. Even as we fight the day-to-day battles, we need to figure out how to develop worldwide standards. The auto industry is one of the largest and most central in the world economy today. Fewer than 10 manufacturers dominate it, operating on practically all continents.

Working-class globalization vs. capitalist globalization

The WTO and “free trade” agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA and the newly proposed U.S.-Korea Free Trade Act all seek to increase competition among workers worldwide, to weaken and cheapen labor internationally. They do this in part by facilitating capital’s ability to move in and out of countries, and thus to whipsaw workers against each other, in the infamous race to the bottom. And that is just what the companies are now trying with the workers at Delphi and GM.

Capitalism’s weakness

It is helpful in these difficult times to see that the challenge to labor is growing out of capitalism’s weakness, not strength. Overcapacity drives capitalists to try to weaken and cheapen labor, cut benefits and pensions, close plants, skimp on education, health care and the infrastructure, ravage the environment, and plunder outright.

Auto producers, financed by banks drowning in too much capital, now have worldwide capacity to build 20 million more vehicles than they can sell annually — an overcapacity of 25 percent. Yet they continue to open more and more nonunion plants, while closing those that are unionized! There is a 3 – 4 million vehicle overcapacity in the U.S., even with record sales. The mass media have been feeding into the anti-labor frenzy, claiming that no one wants to buy GM’s cars. But the fact is, GM is the largest automaker in the world to this day!

GM management has been doing its part with widely publicized firings of thousands of engineers and support staff in North America, and cuts in salaries and benefits. These firings and cuts send the unmistakable message to consumers: “You cannot have confidence in our vehicles.”

The GM/Delphi numbers don’t add up

GM management is claiming huge losses that force it to renege on contracts, close dozens of plants, lay off tens of thousands and hire temps. Yet at the same time it is opening up billion-dollar plants around the world, including a big Opel plant in Slovakia and new facilities in China. Delphi management likewise claims bankruptcy, yet it has been opening up numerous plants in Asia and Eastern Europe, and reports those are highly profitable. Something does not add up.

Days after GM claimed a loss of $323 million in the first quarter of 2006, it revised results to report a profit of $445 million. How does a corporation make an “error” of $767 million? GM is already being investigated for its questionable Enron-like accounting practices domestically. The truth is, there are literally thousands of ways that large corporations, especially those that operate in many countries, can cook their books, shifting losses where they are needed and profits where they help most.

Time to open up the books

It is time for their books to be permanently opened to unions and union-loyal accountants and experts. And not just their U.S. books but all the books on all their operations globally. After all, management readily opens up the books to inspection by Wall Street banks and credit-rating agencies, which then collude with management against labor.

How about a race to the top!

Pushed by the deepening contradictions of their system, the capitalists are trying to divide, weaken and cheapen workers worldwide, in a terrible race to the bottom.

Communists are dedicated to uniting the workers of the world in a race to the top! Over the years, Communist Party USA members played key roles in building not only the UAW, but the Mine, Steel and Longshore Workers and the other CIO industrial unions, and in helping organize movements against racism and unequal treatment everywhere.

Workers of the world, unite

Does the Communist Party only support struggles for socialism? No. We believe day-to-day struggles to meet human needs also point the way to and are consistent with the struggle for socialism. We support and have historically been in the forefront of struggles to defend and improve wages and work conditions, for good jobs for everyone, to build and strengthen our unions, to organize the unorganized, for peace and equality worldwide and for quality and affordable housing, education and health care for all.

The Communist Party stands for the unity in action of the workers of the world.

Scott Marshall (scott@rednet.org) is secretary of the Communist Party USA’s Labor Commission. Jim Gallo and Wadi’h Halabi contributed to this article.

Jefferson case has earmarks of a Rove operation. News Analysis

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 07:16:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — The ultra-right is hopping mad that House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) joined with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a sharp protest to President George W. Bush for the FBI’s raid on the Capitol Hill offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.).

Hastert and Pelosi saw the May 20 raid, in which 15 FBI agents spent 24 hours searching Jefferson’s office, as an unprecedented and menacing assault on “separation of powers.” It is, they charged, an affront to Congress’ role as a “co-equal” branch of government as spelled out in the Constitution. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), on the other hand, fully supported the FBI raid. The White House hastily put files seized from Jefferson’s office under seal for 45 days in hopes of tamping down the firestorm.

The ultra-right see Jefferson as their best hope of diverting attention from the vast “culture of corruption” that has engulfed the Republican Party since the Bush-Cheney gang took office. Already disgraced GOP Rep. “Duke” Cunningham is in jail and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted and resigned from office. Other Republican lawmakers are under investigation in the Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff scandals. The GOP’s best hope for neutralizing the “sleaze factor” in the 2006 midterm election is to convince voters that the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans.

One angry Republican ranted on Big Lizard’s Blog that Hastert is “permanently preventing the Republicans from using [Jefferson’s] massive corruption … as a bludgeon against the Democrats.”

The Jefferson case has all the earmarks of a Karl Rove operation. Bush’s chief political strategist, himself reportedly under indictment, has said that the key to his modus operandi is to identify the opposition’s “strongest point” and then undermine that strength with a campaign of smear and innuendo in the media. With corruption looming as a major threat to continued Republican control of the House and Senate, Rove would naturally seek out a vulnerable Democrat to even the odds.

Tactics of entrapment were used to “get” Jefferson, who has not been charged and maintains his innocence. An FBI agent posing as the agent of an African company allegedly handed Jefferson $100,000 in cash bribes as the video cameras rolled.

Newhouse News carried a report last year following the FBI search of Jefferson’s homes in Washington and New Orleans comparing the probe to the FBI’s ABSCAM in the early 1980s in which FBI agents dressed as Arab sheiks offered cash bribes to lawmakers. Sen. Harrison Williams (D-N.J.), a pro-labor lawmakers and several others were forced to resign at that time.

The probe of Jefferson, the Newhouse report states, has “all the markings of an undercover sting operation.” Former U.S. Attorney for Louisiana Harry Rosenberg told Newhouse, “Following ABSCAM, there was an outcry regarding the tension between entrapment and legitimate governmental investigations.” When entrapment tactics are used against elected officials, he added, “approval must come from the highest levels of the Justice Department.”

A congressional report in 1983, following ABSCAM, criticized the sting operations as “a license for agents to assume false identities to see what criminal activities could be detected and developed across the country.”

When the FBI, in 1990, “caught then-Washington Mayor Marion Barry on camera smoking crack in the Vista Hotel, it appeared to be an open and shut case.” But the jury perceived it differently: a white, Reagan Republican federal prosecutor was railroading a Black elected official. They found Barry guilty of one misdemeanor, drug possession.

There is a long and sordid history of targeting Black elected officials in these dirty trick operations going back to the racist vendetta against Harlem Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-N.Y.) in the 1960s. He was censured and forced to resign. His real transgression was his lead role in pushing through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, Medicare and the anti-poverty programs while also opposing the Vietnam War. A more recent example is Philadelphia Mayor John Street. As he was campaigning for reelection facing a tough Republican challenger, aides discovered an FBI bug hidden in Street’s office. Outraged voters returned Street to office in a landslide.

Tim Wheeler (greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com) is the People’s Weekly World political correspondent